


How Spider Came To America

by Taz



Category: American Gods - Gaiman
Genre: African Mythology, Gen, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-26
Updated: 2009-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-05 07:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taz/pseuds/Taz





	How Spider Came To America

The Ebo girl had been harvesting gourds when she was captured. Spider,  
had been up in the Banyan tree, watching her cut little ripe ones and  
put them into a mesh bag that she had woven herself. She had woven it  
just the way her mother had taught her and she had woven it so  
cleverly that Spider, whose name was Kwaku Ananse and who was just a  
little jealous of clever people, was thinking of a trick he could play  
on her. He would spin himself into a handsome man, seduce her and then  
when her mind was on the pleasure his penis was bringing her, he would  
steal the bag and the gourds in it.

Spider had just about made up his mind to do exactly that when a band  
of men came out of the woods. These men were waving swords and  
pointing muskets. The Ebo girl was too frightened to run away. The men  
surrounded her and put a rope around her neck. They put her at the end  
of a skeine of men and women all tied together neck-to-neck.

The men with the muskets and swords were black men. Not black like the  
Ebo girl whose skin was ebony that had been rubbed by hand and  
polished with oil. They were black like the rough dry husks of the  
Kola nut and they spoke the language of Ashanti who were enemies of  
the Ebo.

When it became clear that they were going to march away and take the  
Ebo girl with them, Spider, who considered himself a great traveler,  
thought it might be fun to go along and see new places. Besides,  
someone else might get the Ebo girl's clever bag. He dropped down from  
his tree on a fine white thread, scampered across the grass and ran up  
the Ebo girl's leg. Any other day the Ebo girl would have felt him  
tickle her leg and slapped him, but she was too frightened to do  
anything except clutch her little bag.

The men of the Ashanti had put a rope around her neck and tied her to  
another woman at the end of a line of women and men, all of them tied  
together neck-to-neck. When they marched away, Spider went with them,  
hidden among the gourds.

Spider tucked himself inside a small hole in the dry stem of a yellow  
gourd and traveled all through the land of the Ashanti. And he stayed  
in the stem even when the Ashanti sold the Ebo girl to the Akyem and  
the Akyem sold her to the Brong and the Brong sold her to Fante and  
the Fante sold her to the slave buyers who worked for the powerful  
king who owned all the slaves in the kingdom of Dahomey.

The king of Dahomey had become powerful by trading gold and ivory for  
guns. He had used the guns to conquer all the tribes around Dahomey,  
except the kingdom of Whydah which was a country of many mud houses by  
the sea. The king of Whydah had sold him the guns. But the guns were  
made far away by white magicians and the guns needed gunpowder to  
work.

Gunpowder did not keep well in hot damp land of Dahomey and so the  
king was always needing to buy more. Then he learned that the white  
men who made the guns and the gunpowder and sold them to the king of  
Whydah were just as happy to trade for slaves as they were for gold.  
The king of Dahomey had thought about this for a while and then  
declared war on the king of Whydah. He cut out the middle man by  
cutting off his head.

The Ebo girl had been put in a box called a barracoon that was mostly  
underground because it had been build to keep gold safe and not keep  
all the strings of slaves who had been put inside it. Spider saw that  
the strings of slaves bore the country marks of all the kingdoms  
around Dahomey and he smelled the sea so he went into the sunlight and  
looked around.

He saw that the kingdom of Whydah was many mud houses with grass roofs  
and that Snake, who was the god of Whydah, lived in the biggest of the  
houses with the highest roof.

That was where Spider went and found Snake, who was twelve feet long  
and opened one gold eye when Spider saluted him.

"Kwaku Ananse." Snake said. He did not bother to lift his head because  
he had just eaten a pig and there was a lump in his middle as big as a  
barrel of gunpowder and he was very sleepy. "I see you far from home."

"And like to see me further," Spider said. "What is that ship on the harbor?"

"The ship of the white men," Snake said.

"They don't look so white," Spider said. "All pink and brick red and  
tan. And some of them are black. Where are they going?" Spider said.

"I don't know," said Snake. "They don't bother me. I don't care."  
Snake closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Spider went back to the barracoon where the Ebo girl was.

The next day, they were taken to the docks. The Ebo girl lost her  
clothing and the mesh bag she had clung to all the way was torn from  
her hands by the master of the ship. Iron manacles were locked around  
her ankles. She was taken out to the ship in a canoe. Men and women  
were separated and were put down below the deck where it was dark and  
too low to stand upright.

The air was foul with the smell of frightened people lying naked on a  
rolling wooden floor. There were so many, so tightly packed, that  
there was no room to turn over. If any one had wanted to turn over,  
they would have all had to turn over together because the sailors ran  
a chain through the iron manacles around their ankles. For three days  
that was how they stayed, until the ship put to sea.

The story of that voyage is a bad one and it has been told The sailors  
treated the slaves like cattle taken to market. Like cattle they were  
fed and watered. And to keep fit were forced to sing and dance on the  
deck each night when the weather was fair. In spite of their care many  
sickened and died. The Ebo girl sickened with a fever but they still  
made her dance. Spider liked to dance. He spun himself into a likeness  
of the Ebo girl and danced on the deck beside her. He danced so well  
that he danced away from her and the sailors could not take their eyes  
off of him. They did not notice when the Ebo girl slipped overboard  
and the green water cooled her fever forever.

The pilot of the ship watched Spider dance and his yard became stiff.  
Since he had a little cabin all to himself, he took her there to  
pleasure himself.

But when the pilot put his penis inside of Spider, Spider wrapped all  
his eight legs around him. Before the pilot could scream, Spider  
filled his mouth with silk and sucked all the juices from his body.  
The next day, the ship's master found the pilot dead, already wrapped  
in a pale shroud for burial.

In the days before Harrison invented his wonderful clock, any sailor  
worth his salt knew how far north or south he had sailed from where he  
started by the sun and the moon and the constant stars. But, out of  
sight of land, a sailor could only guess how far east or west he was.  
He might be guided by the words of men who had gone the way before  
them and had written down how many days to sail with the wind until  
the water turned from gray to green and then how many days to sail  
south until the water turned blue. Those instructions were written in  
secret codes in a book called a rutter. Only ship's pilot knew the  
code.

The ship's master was no pilot and, although, he sailed west with the  
wind for as many days as he remembered the last voyage had taken. And  
then sailed as many days south as he remember. The ship ran upon a  
hidden reef one dark of the moon. All on board were drowned. Except  
for Spider who floated to shore on the boyant gourds that were still  
in the Ebo girl's clever mesh bag that the master had kept in his  
cabin.

This is one story of how Spider came to America.

***  
12/24/06


End file.
